


HERE ARE THE SKIES ILLUMINATED AT THE CENTER OF YOU

by oikawafflehouse



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Growing Up Together, Introspection, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oikawafflehouse/pseuds/oikawafflehouse
Summary: Here is the sky in Tokyo, where birds with healed wings come to fly.A message for Oikawa Tooru.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 18
Kudos: 49





	HERE ARE THE SKIES ILLUMINATED AT THE CENTER OF YOU

**Author's Note:**

> this is a love letter to oikawa tooru within a love letter to iwaizumu hajime within a love letter to the sky.

It is a difficult thing to separate yourself from the home of your childhood, and this is not just about the roof you grew up under. 

This is about about that beacon, that streetlamp in the dark that becomes as familiar to you as the thin, white scar on your left calf. That ever-present fixture you don’t even have to think twice about because it’s as natural as breathing to you. 

This is about about the people who have watched you grow up and can spell out your name using the streets you grew up with. The soft-spoken rituals you create. The memories that stain you blue. 

All of it looks like home to you. 

Don’t forget this, though. The roof you grew up under is a lovely place; its walls are painted to match the color of the sky in August. 

Here is your mother, who can make you feel big and small all at the same time. Here is your nephew, who reaches out for more than he can hold and who can always make you laugh. Here is your sister, who fills your house to the brim with love and the music of the man who lives on the moon. 

There is you, too, and another home you make, right down the road. 

There is a street lamp, right down the road.

There is a boy, right down the road. 

Here is that street lamp, growing up alongside you. Here is that boy, among this landscape of change. His transformation reflects everything you’ve gone through together, and that’s not even including all of the bridges you’ve burnt down that light your way forward (it burns; you burn), nor the pride you hold in one hand like a bird with a broken wing (it heals; you heal).

You catch glimpses of this boy in the mirror fragments that make up your life, for the changes in him reflect the changes in you. You find him in the depths of your bedroom closet. In the same seat beside you in class, year after year. In a cab, where you imagine yourself taking his hand and squeezing it tight. On the opposite side of the court as these two found families clash. A night where a promise is made as the stars bleed over you. 

You find him in yourself, and you hold it. You hold it tight like a prayer crushed underfoot by a mortal on their way to the temple in the winter. You hold it, just like those forty days that held the two of you, balanced between a king’s first and last, dying breath. 

You’ve never been good at letting go. The Pacific Ocean of tears you’ve cried tell you as much. You often think of the image of you taking his hand, where it reads in the palm of his hand like a vow; _THIS IS NOT YOUR DESTRUCTION BUT INSTEAD YOUR CREATION._

First and last, dying breath. Remember this, even as your lungs diverge. 

Here is a truth you learn at the sour-candy-apple age of eighteen: the new people you meet will never know what you were like from Before. They will only see the After, and it is polished and it is beautiful like sea glass but it wasn’t always like this, was it? 

They will never know about how far you’ve come or of the castles you’ve stormed and the ones you’ve built from the scraps of your own creation myth. They won’t know about how you once cut the back of your leg while hiking with your nephew, or your favorite Bowie song for dancing in the kitchen with your sister. They won’t know about the different homes you carve out for yourself with patient hands. 

They’ll look at you and their eyes will paint a picture and the blues will all blend together nicely but it still won’t be _that_ shade of blue, the kind of blue that spills out of that boy’s hands and covers you whole. The kind you can paint all the walls with.

You won’t want any other eyes on you, no other shade of green, and it might take a whole fucking ocean for you to let go of this - to let go of his hand in the cab - but when you do, it will be worth it, for what better way is there for you to measure your growth through the distance carefully placed between him and you? In those quiet, stolen glances as he stands before you at true north, with his arms crossed over his chest, finally ready to fulfill that starry-night promise? When you can take that film scene you replay over and over in your mind and make it real?

_I am going to defeat you,_ your eyes triumphantly tell him as you take center stage on the court once more. 

_Bring it on_ , his eyes whisper back, and all the roofs of every building you’ve ever walked through come crashing down. 

It paints a different kind of picture. 

Here are the familiar streets that spell out your name. Here are the rituals, _repeat after me_. 

Here is the boy from the cab. 

Look at the sky; you can see it in the hole above you now where the roof used to be. Here is the sky in Sendai, the one that always seemed so close enough to touch with the gentle touch of youth. Here is the sky in Buenos Aires, large enough to swallow you up and spit you out. Another place to call your own, a place where you’ve made a name for yourself (but you’ll still never forget the way your name sounds like summer coming from his lips). 

Here is the sky in Tokyo, where birds with healed wings come to fly. 

It is a difficult thing to separate yourself from the home of your childhood, but your home, that street lamp, that boy, lingers with you always, and when you finally have the courage to reach out and take his hand in the cab after the game, you will find a different message wrapped up in the palm of his hand:

_Welcome home, Tooru._

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/oikawafflehouse)
> 
> 1\. a love letter to three of my favorite things: oikawa tooru, iwaizumi hajime, and the sky. i guess you can read it as a, 'something i wish i had been told when i was younger' type of story, but you do you
> 
> 2\. the title is inspired by this line from a richard siken poem, 'saying your names': 'Here are the illuminated cities at the center of me.' 
> 
> 3\. if you somehow managed to read all of this and were able to discern meaning from this: thank you. if you left kudos: you have my eternal gratitude. if you commented: let's elope. please remember to drink lots of water and to do your best to stay healthy during these trying times ily all so much <3


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